CPJ trip to Morocco reveals gap between rhetoric and reality

Two weeks ago, Mohamed Abdel
Dayem, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program
Coordinator, and I were in Morocco to
hold meetings with government officials as well as journalists. In some ways
the trip was a success, but in other ways it left much to be desired from a
country that claims to be “at the forefront of liberalization in the region,”
to borrow language used by Morocco’s Communication Minister Khalid Naciri in
his meeting with CPJ on February 19.

Although attacks on independent journalism in
Morocco escalated
in 2009, reinforcing concerns a CPJ delegation conveyed three years ago in
Rabat to his predecessor, Nabil Benabdallah, and former Prime Minister Driss
Jettou, Communication Minister Khalid Naciri strongly denied that Morocco under
King Mohamed VI was turning its back on what he called the “democratic process.”

“It is a myth to claim that the democratic
process is regressing,” Naciri told CPJ. “Press freedom is one of the
cornerstones of our policy and we have absolutely no intention of wandering
away from it. The enemies of press freedom in Morocco are those using their
newspapers for commercial purposes and grossly violating ethics and turning
critical journalism into systematic accusations and defamation.”

Naciri went so far as to allege that “red lines”—the
unwritten rules on what kind of journalism is acceptable—have gradually vanished since Mohamed
VI ascended to the throne in 1999 and “all issues, including the king’s private
life and the country’s territorial integrity, are defiantly tackled on a daily
basis by journalists determined to settles scores” in a country where “most of
the 27 dailies have an editorial line opposed to the government.”

He did not sound convincing in response to findings
by local and international groups, including CPJ, that the judiciary was politicized
in order to imprison
weekly Al-Mishaal’s editor Driss
Chahtan for stories about the king’s health as well as close down his paper,
the independent daily Akhbar
el-Youm, and another weekly, Le
Journal Hebdomadaire. He denied that the crippling
damages imposed on three dailies found guilty of hurting the “dignity” of Libya’s
Col. Qaddafi’s was politicized. Naciri said that “these are ordinary cases in a
democratic country. There are more similar cases in other democracies.”

Naciri acknowledged, however, that 2009 was a “difficult
year” for the press in Morocco.
He argued that the “national dialogue” on “Media and Society” in early March
initiated by different parliamentarian groups would improve the press freedom
situation. The National Syndicate of the Moroccan Press (NSMP), the Moroccan
Fedration of Newspapers Publishers (MFNP), the Ministry of Communication and
local human rights groups have been invited to take part in this “national
dialogue” behind closed doors. But many wonder how such hearings could spur
hope among independent journalists when neither the NSMP nor MFNP have a
reputation for protecting the country’s most critical journalists and their
colleague Chahtan remains in prison.

The CPJ delegation informed Naciri, who said
more than once that Morocco offered more room for freedom of expression than
most countries in the region, that Egyptian journalists, for instance, were not
jailed for writing in previous years far more critical stories about President Hosni
Mubarak’s health and Qaddafi’s autocratic rule.

But it was the case of Le Journal Hebdomadaire, a leading government critic silenced
earlier this year, and its former managing editor, Aboubakr Jamai, which
spurred the most anger from Naciri. “Jamai thinks he is above the law and can
get away with this by complaining to the U.S. State Department,” he said. He
forgets that failure to pay taxes is one of the most unacceptable abuses in a
democratic society.”

Unlike human rights lawyers and independent
journalists, he argued that the case filed against Le Journal Hebdomadaire, allegedly for failing to pay social
security and other debts, “was not politically motivated.” An independent
journalist told CPJ on condition of anonymity that Naciri’s anger with Jamai “simply
mirrored the angry reactions this highly competent, honest, and uncompromising journalist
has been prompting for years among King Mohamed VI’s top advisers who enjoy
more influence than any member of the government, including Prime Minister
Abbas Fassi.”

Jamai and Ali Amar, co-founder and former editor
of Le Journal Hebdomadaire and author
of a banned book on Mohamed VI’s 10-year rule took refuge in neighboring Spain
in the wake of what many call the “political assassination” of the country’s
most critical newspaper launched in 1997 under King Hassan II. Both were fully
aware that they would end up in jail in case the debts of their defunct paper
were not paid. Their former colleague, cartoonist Khalid Gueddar, was prevented
in February from traveling to Spain
by Moroccan frontier police without any explanation, Gueddar told CPJ.

Naciri’s aides took us by surprise when they
said Prime Minister Fassi was expecting to meet with us on February 18. “How could we go to such
an important meeting without being informed by Moroccan authorities?” asked Abdel
Dayem. When contacted on February 19
by CPJ, the prime minister’s office confirmed that it had awaited the CPJ
delegation on Thursday, without explaining, however, why no information was
conveyed to the members of the delegation or their colleagues in New York, especially in
light of CPJ’s repeated requests to schedule such a meeting. Asking if we could
reschedule the “missed meeting” for the coming days, we were told that it would
be “extremely difficult; the prime minister has a very busy schedule.”

The request to meet with the prime minister was
not the only one that went unrequited. Requests to meet with Morocco’s Minister of Justice and Speaker of
Parliament also went unanswered, despite CPJ having submitted such meeting
requests well over a month prior to its trip to Morocco.

Fassi never earned much of a reputation for
caring about independent journalism or being in any particular hurry to
implement a government promise made more than two years ago to submit to
parliament a less restrictive draft press law. Twenty six articles of the country’s
notorious 2002 Press Law call for prison penalties for journalistic activities
deemed offensive.

Independent newspapers didn’t cover CPJ’s
“missed meeting,” but they did cover the failure of authorities to officially
authorize a meeting between journalists and our delegation. That meeting was
slated to take place just hours after our meeting with the minister of communication.
“Local authorities in Casablanca shattered to pieces Communication Minister
Khalid Naciri’s allegation that it was a myth to claim that press freedom in
Morocco was backsliding,” said Akhbar
al-Youm al Maghrebia, which emerged from the ashes of the daily Akhbar al-Youm, closed down in September
for publishing a cartoon concerning a “strictly private wedding ceremony
organized by the royal family.”

Having been denied an opportunity to host a
roundtable to discuss the state of press freedom in Morocco, we were forced to meet
with our colleagues informally over a cup of tea to hear their concerns and to
express our solidarity. The Ministry of Communication denied that CPJ was
prevented from holding a meeting with our colleagues and strangely claimed that
CPJ “didn’t bother to submit any application” to Moroccan authorities to
authorize such a meeting. CPJ in fact submitted applications twice—on January
29 and on February 16.

Equally disappointing was the failure of
officials at the Moroccan Embassy in Washington
as well as officials in Rabat
to secure a CPJ visit with imprisoned journalist Driss Chahtan. This despite
multiple verbal and written requests from CPJ to the Moroccan Embassy, the
Ministry of Justice, and the relevant prison authorities. A request for such a
visit from Ahmed Herzenni, president of the government-appointed Advisory
Council on Human Rights, to prison authorities following a positive meeting
with CPJ’s Abdel Dayem, also failed to generate the permission necessary for
the prison visit.

Kamel Labidi is a freelance journalist and former CPJ representative and consultant for the Middle East and North Africa region. Labidi returned from exile to Tunisia in 2011 to head the National Commission to Reform Information and Communication. He resigned in 2012 to protest the lack of political will of the Islamist-led government to implement the commission’s recommendations.